Lola
I wait until the shadows start to stretch, until the cold in my bones is crippling. I’ve stopped crying. There’s nothing left to squeeze out.
I need to escape, I need to get away from here. I don’t like being trapped. I can’t stay here with Brody circling me. He is a beast that has been swallowed, chewed up, then spit out by the boy I love.
It’s heartbreaking.
Finally, the door opens. Brody, no mask this time, just the face I used to trust, carved now with new edges. He stands in the frame, arms crossed.
I swallow down everything I want to scream, and instead let my voice go soft, pleading.
“Please, Brody. I need a real bathroom. Just five minutes. I’ll freeze to death if I stay down here.
Please.” I don’t know if the tears on my face are real or not, but I let them fall.
He stares and I push a little more. “You remember, right? Our first summer together, when you swore you’d always take care of me?
When you said I could trust you with anything, even the ugly stuff?
” My voice cracks. “I just want to be clean for once. For you. For… for us.”
That does it. The flicker in his eyes. A ghost of the softness I used to know.
He sighs, jaw tight, and unlocks my wrist, fingers rough around my arm.
“Don’t try anything,” he growls. He leads me up the stairs, his palm heavy at the back of my neck.
The hallway is dim. He points me to the bathroom. “Door stays open.”
“I can’t pee with you staring,” I whisper, small. “Just a minute.”
He hesitates, then relents. “One minute.”
I shut the door, hands shaking as I lock it. I breathe, counting heartbeats, plotting. The window is too small, too high. Only one chance. I pee, I flush, run the water, keep my ear tuned to the hallway. When I open the door, I do it fast.
Brody’s just outside, arms folded. I throw my shoulder into him, as hard as I can. He stumbles, not expecting it, and I bolt.
Sprinting down the hall, my feet slide, my heart pounding.
The front door is ahead. My only shot. I wrench it open, a blast of icy wind slamming me in the face.
Snow is everywhere, thick and blinding, but it doesn’t matter.
I run. My lungs seize. The snow is up to my ankles, wet and numbing, slicing into my skin.
I’m in nothing but a t-shirt, pajama pants, bare feet shoved into shoes that I found in the basement.
The night is black, the world swallowed up. I run until my legs stop working, until the cold eats up all the feeling in my hands and feet. My body collapses into the white drift.
I curl up, shaking, teeth chattering so hard I think they’ll splinter. The darkness presses in, heavy and kind. I close my eyes. Let it end. Let the cold take me. Let me dissolve into the snow and never come back.
My ribs throb with blue cold, my ears roaring with static. My head is a hollow thing. My chest is empty but it hurts anyway. I wish it would stop. The night pins me down, palms my hair, shoves my face in the snow. I shudder. I want to sleep. I want to black out. I want oblivion.
I think about my mother. The sound she made, right before the end, more silence than scream. I bet the snow remembers it, too.
Brody’s voice is still in my head. Not a boy anymore. Not my boy. He says I ruined him. He says I was always made for the dark.
Maybe I am.
I stare at the sky until it goes gray at the edges. The cold isn’t cold anymore. It’s just… gone. I feel everything and nothing. My whole body hums with panic, but it can’t move. The cold is a better cage than Brody ever built.
I blink. There’s no sound. No cars, no footsteps, no shouting.
I think I’m fading. That’s all I ever wanted. To fade. To become a smear in the snow, a rumor.
Let the cold finish me. Let Marcus spin his lies about how I disappeared. Let Brody tear his own heart out searching for me. Let them choke on the aftermath of what they tried to make me into.
But the world won’t even give me that.
I hear him.
Footsteps thunder behind me, crunching through the drifts. Arms seize me. Hard, furious, hauling me up.
Brody’s voice, loud and angry. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Lola? You want to fucking die out here?” I thrash, weak, but he’s relentless.
He throws me over his shoulder, not caring if I scream.
“You want to freeze? You want to make this worse? You stupid, reckless—” His words are clipped, rage trembling in every syllable.
He drags me back inside, slamming the door behind us. The warmth is sudden and searing; my skin burns as the blood tries to return, needles stabbing under my flesh.
“You don’t get to run. Not from me. Not ever again. You have no idea what I’d do to keep you here, do you? If you try that again, I’ll make sure you don’t even get to see daylight, Lola. I’m done asking. You belong to me now. You hear me?”
His grip bruises, his eyes wild. I shiver, not from cold this time, but from the terrible certainty that there’s nowhere left to run. The snow melts off my skin, dripping down onto the tile. I stare at the puddle, wishing I could sink into it and disappear.
But Brody won’t let me fade. Not now. Not ever.
I choke on panic. The cold from outside is nothing compared to his grip. I must look pathetic. Shivering, wet hair, shirt sticking to my tits. He loves it. I see how he drinks me in, sick satisfaction on his face.
“You try that again, and I’ll chain you to the fucking wall,” Brody growls. “Try it and see. You’ll wish you’d just laid down and died in the snow.”
His hands are everywhere. Crushing my wrists. Shoving my shoulder. Pinning me in place with just a thumb to my throat, pressing the pulse so it jumps wild.
Fuck.
I’m hot and cold all at once. The panic, the shame. The want. Like he’s injecting it straight into my veins with every next cruel touch.
He drags me into the main room. Throws me toward the mattress. The impact numbs my legs. I stumble, barely able to stand. He doesn’t care. He paces. A caged thing. A storm about to break the fucking windows.
Slam.
His boot hits the chair. It topples, skittering across the floor. “Thought you could outsmart me?” he barks. “You thought I wouldn’t catch you?” There’s madness now, fracturing every word. “I always fucking find you, Lola. You belong to me. That’s the only truth left.”
I try to shrink in. As small as possible.
Like I could disappear into the cracks of the floorboards.
It doesn’t matter; his attention seeps through everything.
Watching me. Mapping every twitch. He stalks to where I sit, hauls me up by the roots of my hair, and yanks my head back. My body loses all fight.
“You know what happens now?” That low, mean voice is right in my ear. “You pay for trying to run. This is your world now. Me, and this room, and my rules.”
Gone. The sweet boy. Dead and buried. Just this: Brody, the monster, all rage and violence and want.
He pins me with his body, his hand fists at the back of my neck. My ribs scream. My heart skips. He wants me to panic, he wants my fear fed to him mouthful by mouthful.
I try to twist away. Stupid. He’s twice my size. Stronger than a nightmare.
He growls. “Run all you want. I like the fight.” His fingers clamp my jaw. He digs his thumb under my chin, forcing my lips open. “Gonna talk back again, Bambi? Or you wanna see how fast I can make you beg?”
I choke on silence. My mouth trembles. He drinks it in, hungry. He always was a wolf. I just pretended not to see. He shoves me to my knees. Hard, rough, fast. I hate how it makes my thighs clench.
“You look better down there. On the floor. Where you belong.”
My face burns. Every inch of me coils, trying to hide and display at the same time. There’s no dignity left. Just this sick, dizzy fear and the want behind it.
He stalks around me. “I let you get away with too much,” Brody mutters.
“Made the mistake of thinking you still loved me. That you’d be obedient, grateful.
That you’d remember who you belonged to.
You want to die?” He crouches in front of me, face inches away.
“Or you just want to get punished? You want pain, Lola? You want it piled up so high you never forget who’s in charge here? ”
He grabs my chin and squeezes. My skull rattles. I am shivering and helpless. I’m supposed to be strong. I hate that he’s winning.
“I told you what would happen if you ran. Guess you don’t listen.”
He goes to grab some rope, then he crouches in front of me again. Before I can stop him, he takes my hands and pins them together, and wraps the rope around my wrists.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I scream, trying to pull away, but he is stronger.
He checks the knot, yanks on it, then picks me up and carries me to the mattress before throwing me down.
I shake, wild, flush burning up my chest. He wraps both hands around my ankles, pins my legs open. “This is how you’re going to learn. You’re going to lay here, take it, and not fucking cum.” His lips are a sneer.
He straddles me, knees on either side of my hips.
I am so fucking trapped, splayed open, rope burning my wrists, every inch of my body screaming in terror and hunger.
He yanks my shirt up. All the way. Hands rough over my exposed tits.
They perk up, it’s humiliating, soft prey for the predator leering above me. His eyes eat me alive.
“You’re insane,” I snap at him and thrash beneath him.
“Keep looking at me like that. Go on. I want to see the hate.”
His hand shoves the hair away from my face before shoving my pants down. Yanks them off, and my ruined panties along with them. My T-shirt bunches at my throat, leaving me naked and open. My cunt is soaked, and I just want to disappear.
Brody grabs my thighs, spreads them wide, not caring how pathetic I look. Shirt bunched at my neck, tits out.
His pupils are black. There’s no softness. Not anymore. Just that monstrous hunger.